


Something Better

by Morgane (smilla840)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode Tag, M/M, Pre-Slash, Season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-03
Updated: 2012-11-03
Packaged: 2017-11-17 16:33:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/553620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smilla840/pseuds/Morgane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam's thoughts during the end of 'Devil's Trap'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Better

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt _You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it. ~ Bill Cosby_
> 
> Originally posted at my livejournal.

Sam remembers that when he was 8 or 9 years old, his dad left them all alone to go on a hunt.

It wasn’t the first time either, because Dean’s parenting skills were already pretty efficient by then – homework and bath and dinner and school in the morning, and mustn’t forget lunch either, and Sammy I’ll pick you up after school, okay? Do NOT go anywhere without me. 

It is, however, the first of many that Sam remembers distinctly, the others before it only blurry and vague images of Dean tucking him to bed or reading him a story while he asked for their dad.

In his memory, he was scared, and Dean was too, although he tried hard not to show it. Dad was supposed to be home by now, except he wasn’t, and I want Daddy Dean, where is he? Dean hadn’t known and Sam remembers being mad at him, mad at him for being here when Dad wasn’t. So Dean had tried to distract, tried to make him forget Dad was missing and the food was running scarce and Pastor Jim wasn’t answering the phone.

Dean had played with him and tickled him and made him laugh, and Sam remembers his anxiety had vanished, just like that, and he had thought Dean was the best ever. Now, he thinks that if Dean poured all his energy in trying to make him feel better it was because that way he didn’t have to think about their dad, and because if Sam was happy, Dean could pretend to be too.

 

When their dad came back a couple of days later, looking a little worse for wear, he found his two little boys playing hide and seek like they had no care in the world, Sam squealing with laughter as Dean pounced on him.

And being John Winchester, he missed the look of pure relief on Dean’s face and acted like he wasn’t four days late and everything was normal. Sam saw it though, and his relief had vanished. He had run to his room, angry at their dad all of a sudden, and locked himself in. It was Dean who came to lure him out and made him smile again, and Sammy had decided right there and then that all he needed in the world was his big brother.

Looking back now, it makes him feel a little sad.

 

So when Dean starts making jokes and laughs at the face of evil, Sam knows exactly what he is doing. He has been stripped long ago of the belief that his brother is invincible but still, Dean will do anything to protect him. Unfortunately that includes bringing down the heat on himself.

Because in some weird, twisted, _Dean_ way, his brother still believes that if he can laugh through the pain, he can overcome it. Sam isn’t sure he agrees, because in his own rational mind, pain is pain and no matter what you do, it will still _hurt_. 

Dean is different though. Laughter and scorn are his coping mechanism, his MO, and nothing will ever change that. That’s what makes him Dean, that stubborn faith that _he_ gets to decide the outcome, no matter the odds. It’s gotten them out of more than one tricky situation, so who is Sam to complain? He wants to believe his brother is strong enough to weather anything, but sometimes there is this dull, throbbing terror in his chest that one day, it won’t be enough anymore and Dean’s mind will collapse under the strain. 

You can only laugh so much before you start crying.

Of course, knowing Dean, Sam also knows his brother would scoff and shake his head if he knew what’s going on in his head, adorning his wry smirk that is a strange mix of smug ‘no one can get me’ and gentler ‘everybody dies, Sammy’. Sam has stopped finding the first reassuring some 10 years ago, and the second is something he doesn’t want to consider. Because he can survive anything, can survive any _one_ but Dean. 

That’s another frightening – and startling – realization, especially since Dean is now bleeding all over and Sam can’t do a thing about it. He doesn’t want to believe it’s too late though because he wants to see, no, he wants to _make_ his brother happy, for once in his life. Not just content or resigned about what he’s got, but _happy_.

 

He decides that if they get out of this alive, he will make Dean laugh and smile for the right reasons.


End file.
